An American Idyll eBook

And that brings me to my concept of a God. God
exists in us because of our bundle of social brother-acts.
Contemplation and crying out and assertions of belief
are in the main notices that we are substituting something
for acts. Our God should be a thing discovered
only in retrospect. We live, we fight, we know
others, and, as Overstreet says, our God sins and
fights at our shoulder. He may be a mean God or
a fine one. He is limited in his stature by our
service.

I fear your God, because I think he is a product of
the unreal and unhelpful, that he has a “bad
psychological past,” that he is subtly egotistical,
that he fills the vision and leaves no room for the
simple and patient deeds of brotherhood, a heavenly
contemplation taking the place of earthly deeds.

You feel that I quote too many minds and am hobbled
by it. I delight just now in the companionship
of men through their books. I am devoted to knowing
the facts of the lives of other humans and the train
of thought which their experiences have started.
To lead them is like talking to them. I suspect,
even dread, the “original thinker” who
knows little of the experiments and failures of the
thinkers of other places and times. To me such
a stand denies that promising thing, the evolution
of human thought. I also turn from those who borrow,
but neglect to tell their sources. I want my
“simple boys and girls of Washington” to
know that to-day is a day of honest science; that
events have antecedents; that “luck” does
not exist; that the world will improve only through
thoughtful social effort, and that lives are happy
only in that effort. And with it all there will
be time for beauty and verse and color and music—­far
be it from me to shut these out of my own life or the
lives of others. But they are instruments, not
attributes. I am very glad you wrote.

Sincerely yours,
Carleton H. Parker.

CHAPTER XIII

In May we sold our loved hill nest in Berkeley and
started north, stopping for a three months’
vacation—­our first real vacation since we
had been married—­at Castle Crags, where,
almost ten years before, we had spent the first five
days of our honeymoon, before going into Southern
Oregon. There, in a log-cabin among the pines,
we passed unbelievably cherished days—­work
a-plenty, play a-plenty, and the family together day
in, day out. There was one little extra trip he
got in with the two sons, for which I am so thankful.
The three of them went off with their sleeping-bags
and rods for two days, leaving “the girls”
behind. Each son caught his first trout with a
fly. They put the fish, cleaned, in a cool sheltered
spot, because they had to be carried home for me to
see; and lo! a little bear came down in the night and
ate the fish, in addition to licking the fat all off
the frying-pan.